Memorable story: Rangers inspire with cold-weather knowledge

As the temperature dipped in early February, I approached my coworkers with a desperate plea: Did anyone have a sleeping bag that would keep me alive in 40-below temperatures?

I was both terrified and elated. Members of the Canadian Armed Forces were travelling to La Ronge to take part in a winter survival training course taught by the Canadian Rangers, and I had arranged to tag along. I hoped to share stories of rangers who had grown up living off the land and were now using their skills to help provide a military presence in the north.

I would spend the weekend with the rangers as they passed along their cold-weather survival knowledge, and Mother Nature was determined to create ideal conditions for the lessons: the weekend’s forecasted lows were in the -40 C range.

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Prior to the trip, I had been camping maybe five times — never in winter. I knew the weekend would push me far outside my comfort zone.

As I fretted about getting frostbite and succumbing to hypothermia, my colleague Betty Ann Adam did her best to quash my mounting anxiety.

“You’re going into the bush with people who spent their lives learning how to live there,” she told me. “There’s no one you would be safer with.”

I arrived in La Ronge on a Friday evening wearing every item of winter clothing I owned. Hours after the sun set over the frozen surface of Lac La Ronge, I bid farewell to my warm car, tossed three borrowed sleeping bags into a sled, jammed a helmet over my tuque and clambered onto a snowmobile behind Ranger Jim Searson. The rangers needed to set up camp before 30 reservists from across Western Canada arrived to start training the following morning.

Vanessa Searson and Tammy Cook-Searson, members of the La Ronge Ranger Patrol, teach members of the Canadian Armed Forces how to make a rabbit snare.Andrea Hill/The Saskatoon StarPhoenix

I was sharing a tent with Searson’s wife, Lac La Ronge Indian Band Chief Tammy Cook-Searson, and his daughter, 23-year-old Vanessa Searson. Both made erecting canvas tents on one of Lac La Ronge’s small islands look easy. I spent the night cocooned in my parka and sleeping bags, grateful that Tammy — seemingly immune to exhaustion — stoked the fire throughout the night to keep us from freezing.

When morning broke, I joined the reservists as they rotated through stations where rangers taught them how to build shelters, identify plants that are safe to eat and start fires for heat or signalling. Many of the tools I typically rely on as a journalist — my digital voice recorder, iPhone and digital camera — ceased operating in the extreme conditions, and I struggled to even use a pencil and notepad with my thick gloves. I couldn’t record things, so I focused on observing and participating in the lessons.

I was amazed at how the rangers not only survived, but thrived, in the cold weather. I watched Jim scrape ice from a snowmobile mirror with his bare hands and Tammy plunge into knee-deep snow in search of the perfect spot to set a rabbit snare. Meanwhile, I eventually lost feeling in my feet and spent several minutes in front of a fire trying not to shout in pain as it returned.

The reservists were expected to put their skills to the test immediately; they spent the afternoon building shelters where they would spend the night. I used the time to talk to rangers about what attracted them to the job.

The most powerful story I heard came from Vanessa. She told me she spent much of her childhood on the trapline, but drifted away from the lifestyle when she became a teenager and moved to the city. Spending time in the bush is hard work and it was easier to spend weekends going to the mall with friends or taking in a concert.

The La Ronge Ranger Patrol Group taught winter survival skills to members of the Canadian Armed Forces in La Ronge on February 4 and 5, 2017. Photo by Andrea Hill / Saskatoon StarPhoenix

But as Vanessa juggled the responsibilities of working, studying and raising a child as a single mother, she missed being out on the land.

“You get really caught up in life and then taking the days to come up here, it just really slows you down and really helps you think about your priorities and learn the importance of everything you have,” she told me.

Vanessa realized she wanted her daughter to grow up with the same experiences she’d had, but worried she didn’t know enough about living off the land to be as good a teacher as her parents had been. For her, working as a ranger gave her an opportunity to master the skills her parents exposed her to as a child and set her up to be the parent she wanted to be.

I had spent the earlier part of the week reporting on a conference about northern Saskatchewan’s suicide crisis and had repeatedly heard people lament that the number of people who can teach children how to live off the land has shrunk, which is leaving some youth feeling lost.

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